This is a 2-day hands-on pruning intensive course which will cover everything you need to tackle an apple tree, young or old…kept or abandoned. Day 1 will cover the basics of pruning, from tree physiology to how to make a pruning cut to the considerations that go into making a cut. We’ll cover all sizes of apple trees from just planted to deer browsed to juvenile to mature trees. The day will end with participants breaking into supervised groups and working on trees. Day 2 will put into action all that we learned the day before, only this time we mean business. We’ll cover how to prune the big, burly, and the old. We’ll also cover top-working (changing a tree over to another variety) and the steps needing to be taken in order to graft a tree over to a new variety in spring. This class will be capped at 20 participants. Cost Per Person: 2 day workshop is $110, 1 day is $70. Overnight lodging can be made available, ask for more details. In addition to money, work trade and barter are both acceptable means of payment. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP!

Earlier this year, as I was doing some research on the effects of grafting apple varieties to Malus angustifolia (southern crabapple), I kept running across interesting accounts of noticeable changes to the apple varieties when grafted to crabapples. One of these changes is in flavor, which is what I’m writing about today.

This is the original snippet that sparked my interest. Why? Because this dude back in the 1800s is telling me that when he took the Bethlehemite apple, a dessert/culinary apple from Ohio, and grafted it to a crabapple rootstock, he got something different from the original variety. The grafted Bethlehemite apple had developed some astringency. Astringency is the key word here.

OMG, DID THIS GUY TURN A DESSERT APPLE INTO A CIDER APPLE BY GRAFTING IT ONTO A CRAB ROOTSTOCK?

This thought has rumbled around in my head for the better part of this year and whenever I had a moment to sit at the computer and not read my emails, I researched this topic a bit more. First, I went back in history (via google books) to find more testimonials of these findings. Here are a few:

1867:

1871:

1873:

1889:

I could go on, but there are many, many testimonials in favor of rootstock having a flavorful impact on the grafted variety. There were some naysayers, who basically just said “this can’t be so” and changed the subject. But all in all, my historical research has been in favor of a rootstock’s ability to change flavor in apple varieties.

Eager to pursue this topic, I started looking up scientific papers on the subject and started with this, Cornell’s research on nutrient uptake by different rootstocks. The thoughts and questions of the horticulturalists back in the 1800s seem to still align with the questions of today, as seen in this conclusion:

“The ability to match the nutritional requirements of a scion cultivar to a specially tuned rootstock…” COULD, in my opinion, create a cider apple out of a friggin’ dessert fruit.

Positive, I kept up the research and found considerable evidence in citrus fruit that rootstocks can change the flavor of the fruit. Here. Here.And Here.

This study, which looked at an apple rootstock’s impact on triterpene (cancer and immune disease prevention chemical compounds) found this:

“The largest differences in triterpene content were found between rootstocks. The results showed that both at harvest time, and after cold storage except the first harvest time samples, the apples from rootstock MM106 had significantly higher triterpene content compared with those from M9; … Selecting suitable rootstock might increase the triterpene content in apple peel in practice production.”

And this study on different rootstock’s impact on peaches showed that the variety ‘Suncrest’ on Julior (rootstock) and GF677 (rootstock), followed by Ishtara (rootstock), produced fruit with the greatest antioxidant activities and total phenolic contents. The ‘Suncrest’ on Citation (rootstock) and, especially, Barrier1 (rootstock) had reduced nutritional values of the fruit.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?

Right now, everyone I know who is planting a cider orchard is planting on known rootstocks like the MM series or the Geneva $eries. With these rootstocks, we know what size of tree we’ll get and we generally know when it will start cropping apples. This is valuable information because we want order and sense in our orchards. We also know the disease tolerances of each rootstock, which have been known to convey some resistance to the apple scion, and that’s all well and good. There are many knowns of these rootstocks because they’ve been extensively studied…for dessert fruit. But what about cider fruit? How many rootstocks have been thrown out in university trials for imparting astringency to an apple? Probably a lot. But what if this is what we’re after?!

If someone came to my farm peddling their wares and told me that they could take my dessert apple and turn it into a cider apple with one of their amazing magical rootstocks, I would buy it. I’m sure it would be a hit. This is why we have started in on the private research of grafting apple varieties to different rootstocks for the purpose of flavor/nutrient evaluation (as well as growth influences, which is another blog entry).

Currently, my partner and I have Malus angustifolia (southern crab), Malus baccata (Siberian crab), own-root, M7 and M111 trees grafted in our nursery to the same variety. These will soon get planted out at the farm in an area set up for evaluation. This, I believe, is another untouched frontier whose findings could be incredible for the future of growing superfruits, having value-added rootstocks, and growing with lower inputs.

So far, the science and the observations are there. There’s much more to learn, but why not start in on the fun?

Pruning That Apple Tree

Left to its own devices in nature, an apple tree will form into a multi-stemmed thicket, an unorganized, unlovely tangle. From the tree’s point of view this is just fine. It doesn’t care if it produces thousands of tiny apples instead of hundreds of large ones. It doesn’t care if the fruit gets shaded and doesn’t color up. The only thing the tree cares about is its biological imperative, its singular goal in life, to produce viable seeds.We, on the other hand, aren’t so interested in the seeds. We have other goals for our apple trees. We want fruit and we want beautiful looking trees as part of our landscape. So prune we must. How and when?

First of all, the tree should be approachable. If the lower branches are dragging on the ground and form a fence around the tree then they should be cut off or thinned. What good is an apple tree if you can’t even get close to it? There should be an established route up into the tree for picking and pruning and for children and other tree climbers. Secondly, all dead wood should be removed. Then its time to step back and take a good look at the tree and think about balance. Is the tree leaning? Could the center of gravity be brought back over the trunk by pruning out a few limbs? This is a crucially important step for young trees. Keep the tree upright by pruning.

Apple trees are generally trained to a central leader when they are young. Then when they are 8 or 10 feet tall the leader is allowed to whorl and the tree is encouraged to grow horizontally rather than vertically, broad rather than tall. If you have an older apple tree these decisions have already been made for you and, for better or worse, the framework of the tree has already been established. Regardless of how old the tree is there are some rules of thumb for pruning. Prune out any new growth that is either vertical or heading back in towards the middle of the tree. Direct all new growth out horizontally. Let the lowest branches extend out the furthest, with each succeeding layer of branches stepped in so that they aren’t shading the lower branches. Prune out any crisscrossing branches. Make sure all branches have space around them, that they are not competing for sun and air with their neighbors. The effect you want is a tree which is mostly clear in the middle with an even density of foliage towards the outside perimeter. The old adage goes that an apple tree is well pruned when a bird can fly through it. A healthy mature tree can be pruned quite heavily with no ill effects although you should attempt to remove no more than a third of the foliage in any given year.

No discussion of pruning would be complete without mentioning the importance of leaving the branch collar intact when removing a branch. The branch collar is the slight flare where a branch meets the trunk. Make your cut, not flush, but slightly outboard of the trunk and the wound can heal completely over in one season. Painting the wound with tree paint is an archaic practice that is no longer recommended.

When is the best time to prune? Prune when the tree is still dormant but the most severe cold weather has passed. Late February to early April is ideal.

I remember my first encounter with the “serious physiological disorder” called watercore. I was at an heirloom apple event in New Zealand, staring at a table full of old British varieties trying to decide which one to buy and eat first. I settled on a little russeted apple called Pitmaston Pineapple and once in hand, I took a large bite out of it. The inside, to my surprise, looked like this:

The taste was very sweet. A different kind of sweet, though, and it took me a year to come back around to figuring it out. This variety of apple, along with many other varieties, is susceptible to a “disorder” called watercore.

To the dessert grower, this “disorder” is bad news. Most people don’t want to bite into an apple which appears to have a water-soaked flesh because we’ve been taught that anything other than the usual white-crisp-juicy is to be avoided. However! I’m here to tell a different story, potentially one for the watery underdogs. A hopeful cider apple story.

First, let me give you some background on watercore…

To the apple industry, watercore is considered a “nonparasitic disease,” where the apple appears to have a water-soaked flesh. This “disease” takes shape in all apple growing regions of the US and seemingly has a few variants:

Caused by a combination of genetics, the fruit being mature or overly mature, and sunscald due to intense heat.

Low calcium in your soils (which could go back to genetics since there are some calcium hungry cultivars, like Albemarle Pippin, which is known for watercore)

Why is it considered a disease? The brunt of it comes down to long-term storage. Apple packing houses aren’t able to store the apples with severe watercore because the tissues will eventually start to break down, causing the flesh to turn brown (and thus marked as unsaleable). Another reason why it’s a bit of a bother to the apple industry is detection. Aside from some relatively recent research on detection methods, watercore has remained undetectable by the apple industry without the use of a knife (or teeth) to cut into the apple.

Like with the other apple diseases affecting the US, those with watercore are deemed as waste and dumped. In my affinity for looking at common diseases as heroes of value-added products rather than boons to the established industry, I’m excited about watercore. Here’s why:

The area above that looks water-soaked is actually where the apple has flooded its air spaces with a solution of sorbitol, a non-fermentable sugar alcohol which is not technically a sugar. According to Claude Jolicoeur’s Book, The New Cider Maker’s Handbook, sorbitol has a sweetening effect that amounts to about half the effect of white sugar. This means that when a cider or perry (cider made from pears) is fermented dry (the yeast eat almost all of the available sugar and convert it to alcohol), the presence of sorbitol would still have a sweetening effect on the dry cider (because it doesn’t ferment).

The idea of a completely dry cider with a nice, fruity, slightly sweet finish is very appetizing to me and happens to fall in line with my low-input management thoughts from fruit to bottle. Here’s my thought process (and some background story) on this one:

A long time ago, I was helping out in a cider house and they were sending a finished cider through a sterile (sulfited) filter to both strain the yeast from the bottle, but also to prevent any yeast that managed to slip through from reproducing. I was asked to taste the water being sent through the filter to detect the sulfur taste and the very moment when that sulfur water hit my lips, I was struck with an immediate and very scary asthma attack. That day I learned that I’m in the 1% of Americans who are actually allergic to sulfites and ever since, I’ve been a canary in a coal mine with respects to unbound sulfites in alcohol and suffice it to say, I’m not a fan of the additive. It has ruined many a cider/beer/wine for me due to my lungs closing up.

But why the use of a filter soaked in sulfites in the first place? When a cider is fermented dry, there is little fear of the cider/bottle of cider becoming unstable because all of the sugar in the cider has been consumed and turned into alcohol. If cider is bottled and has both alive yeast and sugar, the cider will continue to change in taste as the yeast convert the sugar to alcohol and more carbon dioxide is being created, which has been known to cause exploding bottles. In this situation, the sterile filter was being used because the cider was going to be backsweetened (the addition of sugar after fermentation) with apple concentrate to give the final product some sweetness (Americans love sweet). To recap: Backsweetening + yeast= off flavors and potential explosions. Backsweetening + filter + sulfites= a sweetened cider with less fear of re-fermentation.

What does this have to do with sorbitol and watercore? A higher presence of sorbitol in a cider means my cider can be fermented completely dry (free of sugar) while maintaining a minimal sweetness without fear of re-fermentation. Eliminating this fear of re-fermentation means that I can eliminate sulfites from the back end of my cidermaking process.

Ok, so let’s say that I’m sold on experimenting with this sorbitol/cider thing and I want to grow fruit in order to make this product. Being in the South, I have a lot of hope for achieving such a thing because the causal agents are: Intense heat, lots of sun (sunburn), low calcium, droughty conditions, and genetics.

In designing an orchard and keeping sorbitol production in mind, I would entertain the idea of going towards more of a dwarf set-up, perhaps even a trelli$ set-up on a southwestern facing slope. We’re talking steaming hot, dry, with the trelli$ed fruit being exposed to intense sun. On top of that, the apple system would be on irrigation which would allow you to regulate the amount of water and when to apply it. I’d also layout the orchard in a way which would drain quickly (maybe even a keyline design ;-)). Next, I’d choose varieties which are prone to watercore and also those that tend to hang on the trees rather than drop (which is a good genetic trait for apples in the South, anyways). Apples heading towards being overripe are at risk of watercore, so those that hold on are perfect candidates.

If you wanted to experiment with trying to intensify sunlight into a non-trellised tree, I would still try and have super quick water drainage off your site and have a SW aspect, but you could also try some extreme things like spraying all the leaves off your tree in late summer. I’ve done this for reasons of reducing vigor by using a 501 biodynamic prep, which I sprayed in late summer and managed to burn a BUNCH of the leaves off the tree…on purpose. I think the trick with this is in having a very vigorous tree and also determining the point of no return for apple ripening (if such a thing exists). The spray I applied in mid-August slowed the ripening scheme, which doesn’t help my sorbitol thoughts. However! It makes sense to me that reducing the leaf load on the tree would certainly help the sun scald situation.

I’ve never heard of anyone trying to grow apples with watercore on purpose, but why not? In straying from dessert fruit growing, managing for a certain product like cider could give regions like the South a distinctive taste in their products. We often think about this in terms of varieties and landraces, which are certainly a part of it. But let’s try and capture our environment and create a truly unique product which describes our place in every way.

*This essay has been in the works for far too long and I decided to push it through today. I’ll likely go back over it an link to things stored on my computer and correct spelling/grammar.*

I am soon to launch The Fruit Explorers (.com) webpage, which will exist to be a resource/hub for fruit exploring projects happening around the country. But for now, I am crowdsourcing help for a huge project to find the genetics from Hopewell Nurseries, a pre-Civil War nursery which sold thousands of fruit trees, grape vines and roses (many of which are extinct cultivars).

The ledger from this nursery has been discovered and dates from 1833 to 1860. This ledger contains the names of people who bought trees and often their addresses, which is an absolute gold mine for fruit preservationists/explorers because there may still be trees/vines standing on some of these properties. Many of the cultivars produced by this nursery are now thought to be extinct…so here’s our chance to try and find what’s left. But time’s a ticking! These trees will be well past maturity and the threat of development in this area is a daily pressure on the landscape. We need to create some awareness and get information ASAP in order to see if anything still exists.

We need the following for step 1:
-TELE-RESEARCH VOLUNTEERS. For those interested in volunteering, Eliza will hold a “google hangout” to explain how she uses the public domain (internet) to do fruit exploring research. A volunteer has already gone through the ledger and typed out 26 pages of names and we need to find what we can about these people. Where they lived, if they were members of horticultural societies, etc. You can do this from the comforts of your own home (or work). This is a massive undertaking that can only happen with the help of others. Once we get this information, we’ll all be able to start searching!

Bruised and scabbed apples have more antioxidants and sugars because they’ve fought off natural stressors.

Grocery shoppers don’t generally make a beeline to the scabbed and blemished apples. But maybe they should. New research shows that trauma to the fruit—stresses from fighting heat, bugs, and fungus—forces apples to produce antioxidants such as flavonoids, phenolic acids, anthocyanins and carotenoids. And these compounds have all kinds of nutritional value.

A spin-off article from yesterday’s NPR article on eating ugly fruit, this time on weather.com! I’m so psyched this is getting attention. It’s only the beginning!!

Let’s face it: ugly fruit gets a bad rap. It’s often left behind at grocery stores and sold at steep discounts at farmers markets. More often than not, it gets tossed on top of an ever-growing pile of wasted produce.

But it turns out, these ugly fruits are fine to eat – and they may even be more nutritious.

NPR wrote an article about #eatuglyapples AND IT ALL STARTED WITH THIS BLOG!

When orchardist Eliza Greenman walks through a field of apple trees and gazes upon a pocked array of blemished and buckled fruits — scarred from fighting fungus, heat and pests — she feels a little thrill of joy. “I’m absolutely infatuated with the idea of stress in an orchard,” says Greenman, who custom grafts and grows pesticide-free hard cider apples in Hamilton, Va. These forlorn, scabbed apples, says Greenman, may actually be sweeter.